What's the Most Realistic Artificial Gravity in Sci-Fi?

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2001: A Space Odyssey introduced a lot of people to the idea of rotation based artificial gravity, but in sci-fi, it’s far from the only one to implement the idea! Babylon 5, Halo, and Ringworld also used rotation-based artificial gravity in their stores, but, being an astrophysicist I had to ask, WHO DOES IT BEST? And more importantly, is artificial gravity in space possible? And I’m talking outside of your artificial gravity in Kerbal Space Program (but we may get there). (edited)

Extra Credit:
Kevin Grazier article about Halo:

Old NASA video testing rotational artificial gravity:

MIT video demo of the Coriolis effect:

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DreamsOfMorpheus

Aleksander Stepien

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[benjaminbrewer]

Can you do an episode on "the expanse”. They do water pouring at a slight angle to demonstrate Coriolas effect. Not to mention amazing f**king show.

[lennyf]

I think if this guy spoke just a little bit faster, he would produce enough artificial gravity to suck me into the computer screen.

[JohnnyAmerique]

The Expanse is the most accurate for gravity, and probably overall as well. Stations use spin gravity, ships are configured with their decks laid out vertically, and use constant linear acceleration/deceleration, usually of .3g (Martian surface gravity).

[Canterissiriat]

Halo Rings don't actually use centrifugal force for their artificial gravity, and instead use the Forerunner's artificial gravity technology (which would be eventually reverse engineered by the Covenant, and then eventually reverse engineered from the Covenant's tech again by the Humans). This is noted by Cortana and other characters throughout the series who state that the ring doesn't spin fast enough to produce the gravitational effect seen on the ring.
However, before Humanity had widespread access to artificial gravity technology that would become the standard, they did use centrifugal force on their ships to simulate gravitational forces.

[leandro]

The ships from The Expanse. They just accelerate at all times with the Epstein drive untill half way when they flip and burn to decrease their speed. The floors from the ships are perpendicular to the axis of acceleration, so they just go at 9, 81m/s^2 and have a perfect 1g at all times and super high speeds.

[philiponeill]

My vote actually goes to "The Expanse". They even have a scene early in the series where someone is pouring liquid from a container into a glass, and the stream is offset slightly by the Coriolis effect, forcing them to move the glass slightly aside from directly below the mouth of the container.

[spikes]

TV show "The Expanse" has the best, most of theirs is thrust based gravity.

[BrunoJMR]

although i am a big fan of halo, i'll have to say that in the game, there is also artificial gravity in space ships without any kind of explanation xD

[Josh_the_pirate]

Larry Niven's Ringworld for the win!
The Scrith material and how the ring's structural integrity is maintained is addressed in the books, and is one of the main reasons why the puppeteers are interested in the Ringworld.

[maxbootstrap]

Note: Why do you assume the astronauts in 2001 were subject to exactly one gravity. It makes a lot of sense to minimize the artificial G force to minimize structural requirements and mass. Somewhere between 0.25 and 0.50 seems plausible.

[fjoa]

no rendesvouz with rama? ):
Arthur C. clarke is known for being extremely meticulous with his sci-fi.

[donaldbadowski]

In the accompanying book to 2001, Arthur C. Clarke explains that the rotation induced gravity of both Space Station 5, and the Discovery, was not 1g, but rather 1/6th g, just like the Moon. You don't see that in the movie of course. So the coriolis effect would be much reduced. Now as for Pool running the track in 1/6th g? That of course would bring up other problems, like him launching himself towards the ceiling.
BTW, the book explains the monolith and the aliens that built it so much better than the movie.

[mayhemsrhythm]

The earth-like tube structure at the end of Interstellar seemed fairly accurate. The film didn't give specifications, but the Coriolis effect was present during the baseball scene.

[drewmaggio]

Technically the Halo rings were built by highly advanced civilizations, so there's the caveat

[jpettymd]

Anyone actually watching this video needs to stop what you’re doing and go watch The Expanse RIGHT NOW! (If you haven’t already) 😁

[Grarrgle]

The "O'Neill Cylinder" space colonies from O'Neill's "The High Frontier" book, popularised in Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979.

Even gives examples of what happens when the cylinder is punctured in some way, or, famously, dropped to Earth.

[soulextracter]

Amazingly this guy almost sounds natural in 0.5 playback speed.

[teachersophia]

I love how I don't have to alter the speed of this video.

[rogeriopenna]

1 - both Halo and the forgotten space station from Elysium suffer from a problem... atmosphere leakage. Ringworld had walls 1000 km high to prevent atmosphere leaking.

2 - you forgot another type of realistic artificial gravity, that I have seen plenty of times in sci-fi books: constant ship acceleration. In those cases, the ships are like skyscrapers... instead of "decks" that are parallel with the axis of acceleration, the decks are perpendicular to that axis.

Although we are very far from reaching tech to constantly accelerate a ship even at Moon gravity like accelerations, it´s realistically and feasible in a "short" time frame. Discover some good and reliable fusion propulsion tech and accelerating constantly at 0.1G could be possible.

[HammaneggsAirborne]

I would think that Rama in Rendezvous with Rama or the starports in Elite:Dangerous might be more realistic.